Sunday – walk the dog on the beach at Dunwich. It used to be one of the most prosperous towns in England but land erosion means little but a ruined Priory and a few houses remain. Anyway time to find dog biscuits and beer and solve this weeks puzzle
Usual Everyman regulars although the “primary” and place name are the same clue. I found this less than inspiring to be honest, a few too many loose cryptic defs and dodgy definitions for my taste, thanks Everyman
ACROSS
1. March curtailed, flipping study intensely (4)
CRAM
A curtailed MARC(h) reversed
3. Loud gale found smashing bay (4,2,4)
GULF OF ADEN
A smashed [F- loud – GALE FOUND]*
9. Primarily – unsurprisingly – this Randstad eco city has trams! (7)
UTRECHT
Primary letter clue & also the place name staple entry
11. Pair of characters from 2001 (7)
NOUGHTS
Well there’s two zeros or noughts in 2001
12. Nurse schooner, perhaps port overseen by me (7,6)
HARBOUR MASTER
NURSE – to harbour & MASTER, well Schooner boats have masts
14. Carbon copy, fireproof (a bit) (5)
REPRO
15. ‘Mousy’ lion revived in alarming fashion (9)
OMINOUSLY
16. Poor, like a ‘Dreadful’ description of gruesome Victoriana? (9)
PENNILESS
The stories are described as PENNY DREADFULS
18. Love to yak emptily going round city (5)
KYOTO
O – love & TO & Y(a)K all reversed
20. Dancing, gather bottles and music-maker (6,7)
GHETTO BLASTER
[GATHER BOTTLES]* dancing
23. Aerodynamic device that might come with an alert (7)
SPOILER
Double def or def and cryptic def
24. One takes a bow before and after concert (7)
CELLIST
Yeah not overly inspired by this cryptic def
25. After university, Frenchman acting affectedly: not impressive (10)
UNIMPOSING
UNI & M – monsieur & POSING
26. Disrespectfully, Your Majesty, two or three are needed for a dance (4)
CHAS
CHA CHA or CHA CHA CHA are dances
DOWN
1. Cold rough pods crushed for help when you’re down with something … (5,5)
COUGH DROPS
C(old) & [ROUGH PODS]* crushed
2. … or rapid deployment in some things coming down? (7)
AIRDROP
A development of [OR RAPID]*
4. Complete state (5)
UTTER
5. Cool: Eliot embracing ‘the East’ in freeform works (9)
FANTASIAS
FAN – to cool & ASIA – the east – in TS (eliot)
6. Dessert: tomato on a rusty nail? (5,8)
FRUIT COCKTAIL
Despite appearances and popular wisdom tomatoes are fruits & a rusty nail is a cocktail
7. Removes antlers from deer, regularly cropped, first to last? (7)
DEHORNS
Alter letters off DeEr & SHORN – cropped with the S moved to the end
8. Grub meaning peace won’t come? (4)
NOSH
10. Cut around nasty old icicle: it grips tightly (9,4)
CROCODILE CLIP
A nasty [OLD ICICLE]* in CLIP – cut
13. Charlatans’ trendier analyses heard (10)
HYPOCRITES
Sounds like HIP-PER CRITS
15. Offers introductory music (9)
OVERTURES
17. One’s mixed with gin and drop of rosso (7)
NEGRONI
19. Bad borscht; no starter; Everyman hiding: he avoids problems (7)
OSTRICH
I – everyman in a bad [(b)ORSCHT]*
21. Philosopher’s preparin’ dish for Paul Hollywood, you say? (5)
BACON
I just about suppose it sounds like BAKIN(g)
22. Biblical brother covered in Worcestershire sauce (4)
ESAU
Hidden in worcestershirE SAUce
I thought this was a lot harder than most Everymen. There were a few I couldn’t get despite staring at them for week. By contrast, I’ve done today’s bar a final clue before going to bed.
@1 thanks I thought it tricky, but as a general guide it’s site policy not to mention current puzzles. The Everyman is an interesting one, it used to be a prize puzzle but no longer. If we blog on the day you’ll see the blogs much later in the day for the most part.
Thank you, Flashling.
I ,too, found this to be a disappointing offering. I normally enjoy the weekly Everyman and find solving it to be very satisfactory. Although this was almost a write- in, I was not impressed – too many DDs and some poor parsings.
BTW, we have spent many a holiday – in our youth! – in Dunwich. We used to rent the house next to The Ship.
We would walk the dog for miles.
Agreed, harder than usual and unsatisfactory when cracked. Dehorns was particularly difficult and I ended up revealing it which finally unlocked the rest of the the NW corner.
Don’t usually take much notice of the regular features, but harbour master certainly made ghetto blaster an instant write-in. Ok puzzle, ta both.
I thought this fairly average in difficulty for Everyman, although I had TOKYO for KYOTO until I solved FRUIT COCKTAIL.
Flashling@2: I think it ts still a prize and you can win a book token. There was some discussion here a while ago and Roz claimed that she regularly entered, but had never won. I could be mistaken, but it’s what I recall.
Thanks both.
[10d CROCODILE CLIP: A nasty [OLD ICICLE]* in CROP – cut]
The entry details (including a fax number) used to be in the .pdf version, but no longer. No prizes since the Tortoise takeover?
…It still behaves like a prize puzzle, though: no check or reveal buttons till Sunday morning. Maybe the entry details are in the dead tree edition?
I thought this was harder than usual and I agree that there were some dodgy definitions.
Yes the paper version has entry details.
For 12a HARBOUR MASTER, I wondered whether a MASTER can be a boat without a number and a hyphen in front of it. — oed.com says:
“1827– A vessel having masts, esp. one with a specified number of masts, as in five-master, seven-master, etc.”
The citations (1827-1992) include a two-, two three-s, a four-. a five-, and a seven-master, but the only master on its own is:
“1879 Master, a vessel having masts. Webster’s American Dictionary of English Language Supplement”. — So I’m none the wiser.
Thanks for the blog , bit of a mixture , GHETTO BLASTER very neat , GULF OF ADEN earned a severe Paddington stare .
Nicbach@6 , definitely still a Prize and I still enter but I did win just after the Prizes started again after Covid . Perhaps fewer people were sending it in then .
Like nicback @6, I started 18 with Tokyo. I took “going round” as an anagrind rather than a reversal. Generally I found this a fair puzzle.
Thanks flashling & Everyman.
The Everyman is definitely still a prize crossword, entry information here. Prize crosswords paused during COVID, but the Guardian/Observer resumed at some point.
I enjoyed this, CHAS made me laugh – I thought that must be the answer but couldn’t parse it, until my husband pointed out it’s also an informal nickname for Charles.
I thought this was quite tough for an Everyman but got there in the end. My favourites were GHETTO BLASTER and the cheeky CHAS. Thank you flashing and Everyman.
I liked HARBOUR MASTER (tho had the same query as FrankieG@10, and ended up rationalising it as cryptic whimsy), CHAS and GHETTO BLASTER (which was almost a write-in due to the rhyme). I couldn’t parse PENNILESS. I took no issue with CELLIST. DEHORNS seemed a bit odd somehow, but I enjoyed the wordplay once I eventually identified it and mentally inked over the pencilled-in word.
Thanks both
I couldn’t parse PENNILESS for some time, until the term Penny Dreadful rang the very faintest of bells from my social and economic history of the industrial age ‘O’ Level.
People don’t change much.
Many thanks all.
Liked HARBOUR MASTER, PENNILESS, CHAS and HYPOCRITES.
NOUGHTS: Deja vu.
Thanks Everyman and flashling.
Bit harder than usual and a few obscure clues to grapple with. Missed 3 this week. Not complaining that it was a bit harder though. Ghetto blaster took me an age, and took me back! 😊
Favourites: HYPOCRITES, OSTRICH.
New for me: SPOILER = a flap on the wing of an aircraft that can be projected in order to create drag and so reduce speed.
Spent all week trying to find a deeper reason for CELLIST but the clue itself seems nice with a play on the different pronounciations of bow:
A “bough” after the concert and a “boe” beforehand. Overall not one of my favourites this week. Thanks flashling and Everyman
There were some fun clues in this, but I came here looking for an explanation of 21 BACON, hoping there might be something deeper than a very weak pun. Oh well!
Harder than normal for everyman and I still can’t parse 16a
@23 Mad Actuary. I agree. I got to PENNY for penny dreadful. And I can see that PENNILESS is poor. But more than that I have no idea how it is supposed to work.
Cheap Victorian magazines were called Penny Dreadfuls . If you call one just “Dreadful” it is PENNILESS ( lost the Penny bit ) .
@Roz thank you! That’s actually very neat now you’ve explained it. I thought of Penny Dreadful but couldn’t work the rest of it out.
[Re Dunwich – not just erosion but a huge storm in 1286 washed away lots of buildings. But the Ship pub remains!]
Thanks @Roz – I was also baffled by how this worked. I took ages to get CROCODILE – I think down clues are hardly to visualize when solving anagrams. The rhyme helped me with GHETTO BLASTER as I was convinced that the answer had to be a singer GARETH (anagram of GATHER) whose surname was eluding me.
@roz @11 May I ask why the gulf of Aden gets a hard Paddington stare from you? I have seen you mention this reaction before and I am curious!
QuietEars @29
I think but am not sure (and hopefully Roz will correct if I am wrong) Roz thinks that where the clue indicates an anagram all the letters of the anagram fodder should be in the clue. In this case the F comes from loud so the letter F is not in the clue so the clue gets a hard stare.
Re 20, anyone else go against their better judgement, even after knowing from the remaining letters that a different direction had to be gone in, and take longer over it due to not being able to unsee Beatles?
Agree with those who thought this was a toughie for this category, more of a midweek cryptic feel to me. Wasted far too much time convinced that Nurse Schooner must be an anagram. It was one of a handful I eventually gave up on. Thank you for the blog flashling.
QuietEars@29 see Fiona@30 , yes it is an indirect anagram .
Not really an indirect anagram, quite common in the daily papers, maybe it’s unusual here. To me an indirect anagram is one where you have to think of a synonym for a word or phrase and anagram that – that’s definitely unfair, a single letter insertion in the fodder less so
Indirect is indirect however many letters.
This provoked resistance ( 8,7 )
Thanks Fiona @30 and Roz @33!
Roz @33 & 35 I take the point, but I wonder if the same objection would hold if F had been the first letter of the answer, thus preceding the anagrammatised element. I suspect not.
Balfour@37 that is often done for clues , the first ( or last ) letter is NOT then part of the mixing-up so the anagram is fine . Indirect anagrams are actually pretty rare in the Guardian and FT , I always complain about them and I do not do it very often . They should not appear in the Everyman .
I’m another who didn’t understanding the parsing of 16ac, despite remembering the term “Penny Dreadful”, so thanks to Roz @25 for explaining it.
This CELLIST loves OVERTURES and FANTASIAS but takes true exception to the definition of GHETTO BLASTER as a ‘music-maker’. A ghetto blaster no more makes music than a television set makes documentaries or a book makes stories. Elgar (who loved crosswords) would surely agree.
Re the references to it being a prize crossword (or not). It certainly is – the crossword in the Observer itself (I have no idea what’s on their website) gives both a postal address and a fax number to send in the completed version, to be received by the following Saturday. First five correct entries opened get £15 book tokens … I think the prize has been similar for many years.
From the comments above, it looks like a significant proportion of people on this blog (though whether that’s typical of people doing the crossword each week I have no idea) don’t actually get the Observer, but just look at the crossword online. I know a few people who sometimes do this crossword; in every case in the actual newspaper – I don’t personally know anyone who does crosswords online… (I pay for newspapers I want to read, on the basis that proper journalism – of which there’s less and less about – needs paying for. And in any case newspaper websites are, I find, far less convenient and more frustrating than having the actual paper in my hand – for crosswords as well as for everything else.)
Albert@5: I think that the majority of us subscribe on line now. I live in Vietnam, so buying the paper us a bit difficult, but I read both the Guardian and Observer as well as doing the crosswords. I could do this for free, but feel a moral obligation to support them.
I’m an online solver who moved from just doing the crosswords to reading and supporting both the Guardian and the Observer – though I’m probably not going to pay whatever is demanded if the newly-separate Observer goes behind a paywall. I have got into the habit of not doing the Everyman until the following Sunday when the blog appears, which means I don’t need to remember what I did a week ago.
I quite liked this, Spoiler made me smile. Loud for F as anagram fodder is indirect but I think a worse sin was the measly definition given that the wordplay was a bit iffy.
No sh and Chas were quite original, as was Master for the sailing boat.
Got Penniless but failed to parse it and still don’t fully understand it. Penny dreadfuls described the poor as penniless? Huh?
On to the Styx!
Barrie@44 I also couldn’t parse penniless. Roz’s explanation makes sense – ‘Dreadful’ (in quote marks to make it a thing) as a description of ‘gruesome Victoriana’ (I.e. a ‘Penny Dreadful’), is missing the word ‘penny’, or penniless.
Awful puzzle. Generally too hard and many of the clues were very weak.
I did like “penniless” once Roz@25 explained it. But it’s a bit beyond my pay grade.
Contrary to many correspondents, I loved this one Despite a few easy clues there was plenty to mull over
My favourite hands-down was Chas followed by Bacon
No complaints !
Well, we cruised this until we hit the bottom right. A game of two halves, eh Sean.
Home from US late on Saturday to Herald in the letter box. Quite a tough. I liked Ghetto Blaster which led to Harbour Master. Also unimposing, chas (who remembers Edmundo Ros?), fruit salad and Ostrich.